It’s Season 3 of The Family Dinner Project Podcast! In each of our episodes, Content Manager Bri DeRosa and Executive Director Dr. Anne Fishel talk through tough topics related to family meals and parenting. Missed our first two seasons? You can check out all of our episodes here.

In this episode, Bri and Annie sit down with Dr. Steve Wengel, Geriatric Psychiatry Division Director at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. We’re exploring the importance of shared eating experiences in older adulthood, as well as what families need to know about supporting their loved ones through age-related physical and cognitive changes that may impact family meals.

Episode Highlights:

• Go to 3:36 for a discussion of the impact of loneliness on older adults, and different ways to help
• Go to 10:29 to hear about new dinnertime resources for families, caregivers, and memory care facilities
• Go to 13:15 to learn about age-related physical and cognitive changes that may impact shared meals
• Go to 19:42 for ideas to help manage age-related symptoms and make mealtimes more comfortable
• Go to 24:55 for a discussion of the importance of active grandparents and multi-generational family meals
• Go to 30:40 for tips on smoothing out family meals during life transitions for older adults
• Go to 32:49 for food, fun, and conversation ideas you can use at your table

Related Links:

• Benefits of Family Dinner for Adults
• Dinner with Dementia: A Caregiver’s Guide
• Shared Meals in Memory Care (8-week program)
• Grandparents at the Table: The Importance of Talking About Family History
• How Grandparents Can Help with Family Dinner
• When Different Generations Come to the Table
• Upside Down and Backwards
• Food Collage
• Podcast Episode 10: Does Dinner Make Us Happier?

Full Episode Transcript:

Bri DeRosa: Welcome back to the Family Dinner Project podcast. Today, we are talking with Dr. Steve Wengel, who is the geriatric psychiatry division director at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. And we have gotten to know Steve partly through our new work building statewide partnerships in Nebraska.

And today, Annie and I wanted to get his perspective on something that I, I personally think is often overlooked when we talk about family dinners, which is the impact of social eating on older adults. Usually, the conversation kind of seems to focus on how family dinners can be good for kids, which of course is a huge part of the work that we do, but actually eating together is good for people of all ages.

So first, I wanna welcome Steve to the show. Thank you for being here today, Steve. 

Dr. Steve Wengel: My pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to this. 

Bri DeRosa: We have as well. And Annie, I wanna kick off right with you. I know that you’ve done a lot of work on the benefits of family dinners for adults, and I was wondering if you could just give us a, a speed review of some of the highlights as far as the benefits of family dinners throughout the life cycle.

Dr. Anne Fishel: Sure, I’d love to. And welcome to Steve. It’s great to have you on this podcast. So it turns out that there are mental health and nutritional benefits for adults across the life cycle. Adults who eat with their kids, or adults who eat with other adults, have higher intakes of fruits and vegetables. They tend to diet less and binge less, particularly when they eat with their kids.

And on the mental health side, eating with adults is associated with higher self-esteem and lower rates of depression and stress. And there was a fabulous study that came out in 2025, the World Happiness Report. It was the first ever global data on social eating, and they found that shared meals with adults was as strong a predictor of well-being as income or employment.

And even sharing one meal made a meaningful difference in well-being. And, and this may be kind of a segue for us, young adults and older adults eat the fewest social meals of any adult group that they studied. 

Bri DeRosa: Yeah, that really struck me as well when we first learned about that world happiness data, Annie.

And I know we talked to Micah Kaats at one point, who was one of the researchers on that study. But the idea that people sort of at the bookends of the lifespan are getting fewer social eating opportunities kind of stuck with me, and I, I’d love to kinda start with that loneliness piece if we can, because I know it’s something I have definitely observed in my own family structures.

And Steve, I wonder, is this something that you see quite often in your work? Could you help us understand what family members might wanna be looking for in terms of whether or how loneliness is impacting their loved ones? 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Well, yeah. It’s something I think about and see certainly in my clinical practice.

I’m a geriatric psychiatrist, as you mentioned, so I see older adults, people 65 plus, in my clinic. And I can’t tell you how many times I hear that loneliness is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest issue that they’re facing on top of, of course, you know, the health problems they may have, physical and mental health problems that get, bring them in to see us, you know, in the healthcare trade.

But fundamentally, I think a lot of that stems from, from the loneliness they feel. When you think about an older adult that may have lost their significant other, may be living alone, you know, may be mobility challenged. And again, this– I’m not, I’m painting with a broad brush. Not all older adults fit the, this category certainly, but a fair number of them do, or it’s difficult getting out, and they may or may not have family close by.

Even when they do have family close by, with the, the busyness of our lives, I think they don’t always get to share meals on any real regular basis. 

Dr. Anne Fishel: I was thinking as an older adult myself, I’ve been kind of experimenting with ways of increasing the number of social meals that I can have. I mean, I, I eat every night with my husband, and I love his company, but I sure miss the liveliness of having children, and my adult children now live in another state.

And just this month, I hosted my neighbors for dinner, which was really fun, and had everybody bring something, so it– that made it kind of a community meal. And then I had a conversation starter up my sleeve of asking everybody to say how they came to live in this neighborhood, so even people who hadn’t met had something in common.

And then also this month I’m having my students for dinner, who are child psychiatrists, so that will be some young adults, which will be fun. And then I had a dinner last week with my colleagues from work. And so each one was sort of a different way of mixing things up to have more adult, uh, more adult dinners.

And I know Bri, you did something interesting with your family, your three-generational family. 

Bri DeRosa: Yeah. Yeah. So my– because my, my mother-in-law is now, as Steve said, you know, she’s living alone. She has lost her spouse. You know, and she, she’s about 35 minutes from us, which is not an insurmountable distance, but certainly makes kind of daily, regular check-ins not super easy.

Especially, you know, Steve, as you said, we have teenagers. Life is busy, and so it’s harder for us to, to kinda get around and see her as much as we might like. So we’ve instituted monthly family dinners at her house where she has to do nothing but be available. We cook all of the food at our house and drive it up and finish and reheat there.

And then our young adult nieces and nephews who live about 35 minutes north of her, so she’s kind of in the middle, clear their schedules and come down, and they often will bring bread or wine or dessert. And they show up sometimes with a significant other or a friend or a new person in their lives that they want Grammy to meet.

And, uh, we, we have made a practice of doing this as much as we possibly can, at least once a month. But it’s been a really positive development, I think, for all of us. It’s not just for her. It’s been good for her, but I think it’s been great for us to have that built-in excuse to spend more time together and to really get to know all of the kids as they grow into new ages and stages and have that additional time.

So that’s something that we’ve been doing. 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. I love both of those ideas. I think, you know, what a great idea, again, finding ways for busy families that are geographically spread out to kind of meet in the middle there and yet not put the onus or the burden on the host or hostess. And then Anne, you know, I- When I heard you talk about, you know, hosting these dinners for people in your neighborhood and such, and folks at work, kinda made me think about the definition of family a little bit too, right?

That it isn’t necessarily blood relatives or, or, uh, you know, sort of traditionally defined that way. Family can be a bigger, a bigger tent, I guess, than, than that. So I’m a geriatric psychiatrist. I’m also a… Considered to be kind of a wellness champion for my, my university. You know, we have high rates of burnout and depression in healthcare providers, nurses, physicians, and such.

And so I, I read a lot of the literature on burnout in healthcare providers. And, so I have an automated search engine that sends me articles. Just literally this morning, I got an article on a commensality project for physicians. And again, commensality is not a word that was really in my vocabulary until about three hours ago.

I’m sure it is for you guys. But the notion of, you know, bringing like healthcare providers together for an evening meal once a month, you know, where they can share little bits about, you know, some of the stresses and challenges at work and support each other over a meal. I thought, “What a great idea.”

Simple stuff, right? But, but sometimes these basic simple ideas get neglected, and it seems to be very effective. 

Bri DeRosa: It’s a really good point, Steve. You’re talking about this non-blood related family unit, right? And this is kind of something that I think also plays into thinking about dinner or shared meals with older adults, because there is that transitional phase where potentially people are either living on their own and needing to rely more on friends, neighbors, community members, or maybe they’re transitioning into assisted living or some other kind of group living situation. And suddenly the family available to eat with is actually the other people who are living in that same shared space, right? 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Right. And, and we learned, of course, during the pandemic that people that were, you know, older adults maybe living in nursing homes, for example, early days of the pandemic, you know, got, uh, sequestered in their rooms.

And again, I’m not making a comment about whether that was right or wrong. I think we did the best we could at the time. But they couldn’t even… Not only could they not have visitors from the outside, like their, their, their own, you know, biological families, but they were not allowed to have shared meals with other nursing home residents, for example, right?

Had to eat in their rooms and things like that. And it was– it took its toll. I mean, we clearly, if anybody had any doubts about the value of this, when it was taken away, we certainly saw more loneliness, more anxiety, more depression, and, and so forth. 

Dr. Anne Fishel: You’re reminding me that one of the positive changes that came out of the pandemic and eating is that more people ate with others using Zoom or other remote technologies. And I think a lot of families still do that as a way to have dinner with a loved one who lives across the country. 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. 

Dr. Anne Fishel: It’s not quite the same, of course, but it is a way of keeping connection and sharing a meal with somebody. 

Bri DeRosa: I think this is a good moment to kind of pause and point out that the three of us have worked together recently on creating some resources to kind of help with these shared meals potentially within a communal setting.

So for our listeners, Annie and I have been working on– and Steve has been one of our wonderful reviewers who has taken a lot of time to vet the materials with us and make sure that they’re sound– we’ve been working on two different toolkits to help with dinner with older adults who may actually be experiencing potentially some memory challenges, which we haven’t even really gotten into yet in this conversation, but is certainly a common challenge that impacts family meals in multiple ways.

And so we have one toolkit where we’re aiming this at families who are still caring for their loved one at home and maybe trying to figure out how to make things a little bit easier. And then we have another toolkit that is for families who have a loved one in a facility. So we’re trying to come at it from both ends there.

But I, I wonder if, Steve, families coming to a care facility, having meals together, is this a good idea? Is this something we should be exploring more of, if it’s possible? 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. Hard to argue against it. I mean, it seems like a really great idea to me that it breaks up what can be sometimes a bit of monotony, you know, for folks living in those institutions, and it brings the family, their family of origin back together with them.

A lot of facilities have maybe a family dining room there that I think is often underutilized. I go to a number of long-term care facilities to see some of my patients and, you know, those rooms I think are often lying fallow, you know. So let’s put them to use, you know. And, and again, it can be as simple as bringing in some fast food or whatever, you know, make it simple on busy family members.

But I can tell you, that will be the highlight of that older adult’s day or probably week, you know, when their family co- comes in and joins them there with a meal. 

Bri DeRosa: It would be interesting to maybe talk about some of the hesitations and challenges that…barring geography, right? Barring the, like, we literally can’t go and be there.

Both while that older adult is still living at home and then potentially within a care facility, what are some of the challenges and things that maybe make their family members feel awkward or upset or have a hard time understanding what this person may be going through as age-related changes are taking place and they’re impacting the meal?

Can the two of you both maybe talk a little bit about this for some of the things that families might expect and not know how to deal with at the same time? 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Three-quarters of people with dementia will experience mealtime challenges. They’ll have difficulty chewing and swallowing, get easily distracted during mealtime.

Some of their senses will, uh, kind of erode, so that their taste buds are not as active, their smell is not as acute, so appetite wanes as well. And it’s really a serious problem because feeding difficulties will be part of the dementia process over time and is a predictor of people not doing well or, you know, really struggling with malnutrition and other food-related problems.

So it’s really so important to come up with some workarounds to be able to share ideas with caregivers who can get very scared and frustrated and just not know what to do. And, you know, I think there are lots of ideas about things that, that caregivers can do, from cutting food into smaller pieces to using larger utensils as loved ones become less dexterous, serving finger foods, serving familiar foods, serving food family-style, which tends to encourage communication, asking questions that don’t require memory recall, ’cause that can embarrass people.

Questions like, “If you were to wake up tomorrow and had a, a view that you would love as you looked out your window, what would it be?” Questions like that, that you can answer even if your memory is not what it used to be. 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. The, um, as you mentioned, those, you know, all of our senses, you know, can, can dim a bit.

And interestingly, the sense of smell or olfaction, as it’s officially sometimes called, does get not only dimmed, but actually can get distorted in people with, specifically with Alzheimer’s disease. They found that the changes you see in the brain under the microscope, that happen in like the short-term memory part of the brain called the hippocampus, also affects those olfactory bulbs, which are the sensory organ for the sense of smell.

During the pandemic, of course, we learned that, you know, sometimes people infected with the COVID virus will lose their sense of smell, usually temporarily, and then they get it back, hopefully. But in Alzheimer’s disease, they don’t lose their sense of smell. It gets kind of distorted. And so they might be looking forward to their favorite savory meal, maybe it’s meatloaf on Monday nights or something, and their significant other will cook it for them, and they’ll look forward to it.

They take a bite of it, and they say, “It just isn’t the same,” and they push it away. And I’ve seen this happen in many, many of the families where I deal with, you know, one of the, one of the couple has, uh, has Alzheimer’s disease. It’s probably related to those biological changes that are happening. So they tend to crave sweet things because, you know, then you go back to those basic tongue tastes that we all learned about in, in high school or whatever, and of the four or five, I guess if you count umami, seems like sweet kind of is the, the strongest one maybe.

Yeah. And so they typically develop a sweet tooth. And so I’ve seen this in families, and they get kind of upset because gosh, they go right for the dessert And philosophically, it’s not the worst thing. What do they say? Eat dessert first, you know, life is short. But, uh, maybe, you know, maybe they’re just following up on that, that axiom, I guess.

On a practical level, it’s best not to try to fight that, those changes, because it’s hard to win that fight maybe, and, you know, find sweet things that they can enjoy. Maybe it’s fruit while other people are enjoying the entrée or things like that. Find sweet things that they like. 

Bri DeRosa: Yeah. I really want to underscore that point, Steve, that you just said, you know, it’s important not to fight against the changes, and I think whether it’s a changing taste buds, changing smell, changing preferences, or some of these changes in the, in cognition or communication, you know, I think people tend to get afraid and frustrated, and that can really break down the desire to have a meal with that person.

I think you had mentioned, Steve, at one point that the loneliness is akin to the health impact of like 15 cigarettes a day or something like that? Isn’t there some huge health impact that actually comes from the loneliness factor? 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. There’s a psychologist and researcher named Julianne, uh, Holt-Lunstad, who has done just a ton of research on the health impacts of loneliness.

So it clearly has effects on our mental health, you know, can increase rates of depression and anxiety. But honest-to-goodness physical health changes too, and literally she’s, some people have maybe, maybe heard that statistic before that literally, yeah, chronic loneliness shortens, potentially shortens lifespan and has other health effects equivalent to smoking three-quarters of a pack of cigarettes per day. So pretty amazing. 

Bri DeRosa: It is a mind-blowing statistic, and I, I bring it up because I think it’s really important for people to understand that even if eating a meal with your loved one now feels more difficult, doesn’t feel the same to you, even if it brings up those feelings of maybe grief and loss for family members as they are observing changes that are not comfortable for them to, to witness probably, it’s really important to continue to have meals and spend time together because that’s what’s going to keep their health status as well as it possibly can be.

And Annie, I remember from your research at one point we were talking about kind of the link between the loss of the social meal and then the loss of nutrition overall, right? 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Right. I mean, they do go hand in glove. People are much more likely to eat if they’re eating with somebody else who’s also eating.

I mean, there’s a kind of contagion and modeling and relaxation that comes from sharing a meal with somebody else. So yeah, there’s a direct connection to, back to the nutrition and to food intake, that there’s more intake when you’re eating with somebody else. 

Bri DeRosa: And I feel like this kind of speaks to something that we say to parents of children all the time, right?

Which is, look, the benefits of eating together are much more likely to occur if you’re keeping the mealtime environment positive, welcoming, and social, right? What are some of the other ways that we might think about doing that for older adults as we’re trying to help them maintain social meals? 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Yeah. I mean, some of the advice is similar to eating with young kids, not pressuring people with dementia to finish what’s on their plate or to eat everything that’s, you know, to eat every kind of food.

To really let them take the lead in what they wanna eat and how they wanna eat. If they wanna eat with their fingers, fine, we’re not gonna force-feed them, um, which I think used to be a practice but is of course discouraged now. And then, you know, making sure when you’re talking, to use people’s names in case they have forgotten or they can’t hold onto the names of other people at the table.

Using food maybe as a memory device, talking about the food we’re having and when we’ve had it before, because the, those sensory memories tend to be thicker than some other memories. Maybe having, a little jar with wishes, messages, memories from other family members that can be taken out and read aloud, can also be something that would make life enjoyable.

And then having those conversation starters, as I was saying, that don’t need memory. They could be, you know, these sort of fanciful conversation starters or even asking about your preferences. You know, what do you prefer wearing, sneakers or shoes? Or do you like TV or books better? You know, whatever it might be.

Some things that are, are easy to even, to answer with one word. We have an eight-week program as one of our resources for, um, uh, people who are in a memory care unit and their caregivers, whether it’s family caregivers or institutional caregivers. And I was just thinking about, one of those games is a non-verbal one, so it’s playing music and having people draw for 30 seconds or a minute to the music that they’re listening to, and then ask questions about that. What did you feel when you listened to the music? What thoughts did you have? What title would you give that piece of music? So things that everybody can do that are maybe, aren’t just verbal.

Dr. Steve Wengel: Setting the stage in the environment where you’re having this meal, maybe having very familiar music, especially from, again, thinking about an older adult with dementia, you know, their long-term memory is often quite good. And so maybe having, you know, some, some, some golden oldies from the past, you know. And there’s something about music, just like food, music seems to have some special charms. Yeah. 

Bri DeRosa: I was just going to ask, in terms of the communication piece, I know sometimes my kids would say no filter, right? So like, sometimes I think people try to have these lovely communicative experiences with their older relatives, and things might not go as socially smoothly as they might have envisioned in their heads.

Steve, can you talk to us a little bit about what’s behind that, what’s going on there, and what people maybe should do to handle those kinds of situations? 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. It’s… I’m glad, glad you brought that up. It, one, a little brief bit of neuroanatomy. So the frontal lobes of the brain, you know, are kind of the largest part of the human brain, and they are, of course, situated right up front.

And my favorite lobes, if they, if somebody asked me, “What’s your favorite lobe of the brain?” I would say the frontal lobes. You know, they kind of are the, the parts of the brain that I think give us our personality and give us ambition and drive and all that sort of thing. But they also have a really important inhibitory function, and they kind of help us conform to social norms.

You know, maybe don’t say everything that crosses your mind and that sort of thing. And as we age, even without dementia, they sometimes, sometimes those inhibitory functions are maybe not quite as good as they used to be. But particularly when people have dementia, oftentimes those filters, as you say, oftentimes do not work as well.

And so they may say things that are not as, uh, socially acceptable as we might like, and they can’t really help it. They, they… I think that’s maybe the important thing, is just for family members to understand these are not deliberate attempts to be mean-spirited. For example, if they say something about somebody’s weight or who knows what, you know, it’s not intended to, to be, to be part of the, part of the process.

It comes with dementia. And I think just kind of being forewarned about that and then trying to find tactful ways maybe to change the subject and as best one can or, or, you know, kind of survival skills, I guess, for when and if those things might happen. 

Bri DeRosa: I do want to take a tiny detour here and say we’ve been talking an awful lot about older adults with dementia, but obviously, there are lots of older adults, and I think one or both of you said this early in the episode, who are not experiencing these challenges and who are still feeling well and interacting well and able to maybe be a very active part of family meals and family life, and probably want to be.

And Annie, like I know you’re a very active, involved grandparent. And so I wonder, I think multi-generational and intergenerational meals are not quite as prevalent as they maybe once were. But when those things can happen, what are some of the challenges and opportunities that maybe families should be aware of?

Dr. Anne Fishel: Well, I think the challenge, and I’ll say this personally, it’s a challenge, is not to be a know-it-all. I mean, I know a lot about family dinner, and yet when it comes to my own grandchildren and my children, I really try to be agnostic and to bite my tongue and just to follow the lead of how they do mealtime, what foods they allow, and, uh, when they have dinner, and how long dinner takes, and whether there’s stuffed animals at the table or whatever it might be.

I feel like my job is to support their family, their emerging family dinner practice with their three and their one-year-old. And I think, you know, many grandparents may struggle with this. They may feel that parents are too accommodating to different tastes and wishes of their kids, and that they should be stricter, or they should make sure that the kids stay at the table longer or have better manners or whatever it may be.

I think inserting oneself too much as a grandparent into the mix usually does not go well and will not lead to being invited back as often as it would if you took a more of a backseat. So my sort of workaround is to engage more around cooking with my grandchildren. Well, my three-year-old, my one-year-old I haven’t done this with yet.

But if it’s around holiday meals, we do make cookies, we make decorations with food coloring, and we do collages. I’m going to take care of them for five days, and I already asked my granddaughter if she’d like to make alphabet and numerical pretzels. I know that that’s gonna be a big hit. So I feel like that’s where I can have more free reign and influence and just not really mind my Ps and Qs so much.

But at the table, I really try to be more of a guest. 

Bri DeRosa: And Steve, is this something that, since you work with adults 65 and up, I’m sure you hear a lot about family dynamics. Is this the kind of thing that you hear about? Are people talking about maybe tension between the way that their children are parenting versus the way that they would have?

Food norms, dinner norms, behavior norms? 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. Certainly, certainly hear all of the above, I think, you know. And I was thinking as you were saying what you’re saying, Anne, that, uh, I suspect every generation has gone through this to some extent, right? Like, maybe our grandparents thought that our parents were giving us too many food choices or who knows what.

You know, I almost think that’s kind of something that’s, has maybe always happened. I like what you’re saying about, you know, being more of a guest. I think that’s a really– I like that. That was really, that’s hit home with me here. 

Bri DeRosa: Do either of you think there’s a sense of…this is maybe projecting, but something that I’ve picked up on with family members or people in my own orbit, where it almost seems like there’s a sense of, of feeling like if your adult children are choosing to do it differently, that it’s, it’s an indication that they think you did it wrong.

Is there some of that playing out, where, like, the fact that, you know, this generation might be more willing to give their kids chicken nuggets instead of you have to eat what you were served and you’ll sit here and clean your plate, that there’s a, a sense of like, “Wow, I feel judged because my adult child is not doing what I did”?

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. I think, I think that’s a big part of that dynamic maybe, right? That kind of a tacit, a sense that, yeah, it’s a tacit, you know, judgment of, of what we did or something. Yeah, that’s a great point. And I don’t– and it’s not really intended that way, I’m sure, most of the time, right?

We read a lot into things like that. 

Dr. Anne Fishel: There can be lots of reasons why this generation does things differently, that it’s not all about us. Could be with their, their schedules are busier than ours were, or they have more access to food delivery or any number of things. Yeah. 

Bri DeRosa: I wonder if the, the headline here is really for both parties to assume best intent and to try to take everyone’s involvement in the dinner table as a positive and try to build the relationship as opposed to focus on kind of the nitty-gritty of the choices that are being made.

And Annie, I love what you said about cooking with your granddaughter. That’s definitely one place where I think grandparents can be very involved if they would like to be, in sharing some of the family food traditions, sharing, having the patience and the time, frankly, to cook with kids, ’cause we know that’s often in short supply for parents who are in the trenches.

Yeah. So these are, these are great things. 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Yeah. It’s a value add rather than inserting oneself someplace where they’re doing, they’re doing just fine. 

Bri DeRosa: I would love to kind of wrap our episode with some final thoughts on how we help older adults make the transition from sort of being the head of household and having lots of autonomy over family dinner and making the decisions to maybe this later, these later in life stages where they may be all the way towards living in an assisted living facility, perhaps needing a lot of help.

What are some of the things that make that easier? 

Dr. Anne Fishel: One thought I have is that whatever age one is, having some agency, some ability to contribute is really, I think, meaningful to most people. And even somebody with Alzheimer’s or dementia can participate in some way. They could help choose what food we’re gonna have for dinner, or they could go to the grocery store, or they could be involved in the conversation.

As a grandparent, it’s meaningful to me that I can still participate in family dinner, even if I’m not the main cook and I’m not kind of calling the shots. It’s still, it’s important to me that I get to contribute in the way that I do. So I guess that, that’s my first thought as you ask that question, Bri, is figuring out what are ways that regardless of age or capacity, that, uh, older adults can participate and feel a part of shared meals.

Dr. Steve Wengel: Yeah. I would chime in. I, I love that, that, and that concept of agency, you know, that sense of making a meaningful contribution, whether it’s, you know, helping choose the menu a little bit. Like, and, and again, with a person with dementia, we have to give them maybe simpler choices. Like, “Would you,” you know, “Next Sunday, would you rather have chicken or hamburgers?” Or whatever, you know, so rather than say, “What would you like to have?” That kind of thing. 

This reminds me of a, um- There’s a, a model nursing home. They… It’s a village, actually, in the Netherlands, and it’s, they call it Dementia Village. And there’s really the… When you go to their website, you look and, and it, they try to make it more home-like.

It’s a facility for older adults with dementia. But one of the, the best pictures is they show an older woman, who’s one of the residents there, sitting at a table with one of the staff, you know, preparing the green beans for dinner. You know, snapping off the ends or something, something simple, maybe not involving a knife and all.

But I thought, you know, that’s what home life is like, where you get to make even a simple contribution where you feel like you’re part of the family. 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Hmm. Yeah, I love that, Steve. That’s a great image. Yeah. 

Bri DeRosa: Yeah. I love that too. I, I love that whole idea of a more home-like, more engaged model. 

I would love to maybe wrap our episode here with our practical food, fun, and conversation ideas that people might be able to take away and bring to their own family dinner tables tonight. So Steve, I, I wonder if you have a food suggestion for us. I know you’re a big culinary medicine kind of guy, and wellness, as you said, is very important to you. So do you have a food thought or recommendation for our listeners? 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Well, I… Two quick thoughts. So I attended a, uh, a live cooking demonstration that our local community college, you know, has a culinary institute in.

We actually have been providing online or live cooking classes for people at our medical center, and I actually got to go in person and watch the chef make, make some really good food. And two things struck me. One was he said, “Recipes are guidelines.” I thought, well, that’s a good point, so you don’t have to rigidly follow them.

You can kind of riff. It’s kind of like jazz. You know, you can kind of riff on it a little bit. So it gives you permission to not necessarily… You know, oh gee, I don’t have any lemons, so maybe I’ll use something else or whatever. So that was one piece. 

The other piece was watching a professional chef, like, use their knife is really like a form of art. You know? They, they do it in such a practiced fashion. I thought, okay. And of course, they have to do it more efficiently than we do because they’re producing a lot more food in a commercial setting. But I thought, you know, I kind of, when I’m doing cooking, I like to make it sort of a mindfulness exercise.

You know, can I make those, uh, those knife cuts? I don’t have to be precise. Nobody’s judging me. I’m not on the Food Network, you know, Tournament of Champions or something. But still, the notion of spending a little time and being in the moment and trying to figure out, how can I maybe cut this, this onion just a little more thoughtfully, you know, rather than thinking about other things.

You know, trying to just be in the moment is, I guess… Not sure that’s what you’re looking for, but that’s, I guess, my tip of the day. Can we, can we make eating and cooking sort of a mindful activity? 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Mindful and more improvisatory, like. That’s good. Yeah, that’s a great coupling of ideas.

Bri DeRosa: Yeah. I, I love that because I think what it really cuts to is this idea of don’t be so scared and rigid, and like roll with changes, be in the moment, and slow down if you have to, right? Everybody’s gonna benefit. So I love that, Steve. Thank you. 

I’m gonna go with some fun. And I was thinking about, Steve, you mentioned the taste bud changes and that people might actually start to gravitate more towards sweet foods as they get older and maybe have some, some cognitive changes.

So I thought of a couple of things. One is, to your point about eat dessert first, we actually have a, a thing on our website, an activity called Upside Down and Backwards, which encourages families to set aside an evening where maybe you do everything backwards. You eat dessert first, and then you move towards an appetizer at the end. You maybe wear pajamas to dinner instead of getting ready for bed later. So this might be a fun way to incorporate changes that you’re noticing, uh, in your loved one without making it fraught or tense or shameful in any way. And certainly if you’re worried about nutritional intake, that dessert that you serve first could be fruit with whipped cream or something so that there’s still some nutritional value. But it might be really fun to just say, “Yes, we are gonna do sweet food first.” 

And then the other thing is to maybe make it more of a practical hands-on experience where you’re making food collages that include some fruit and some sweet elements that are out on the table, but also they could incorporate some savory if they wanted to, and everybody’s using their food to make beautiful pictures on their plates and have fun. And that way, you’re taking the focus off what is being chosen and what is being eaten and putting the focus back on the time that you’re spending together. So those are two kind of quick activity fun ideas that I had. 

And Annie, conversation? 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Conversation. So I’m gonna go kind of lean more into this idea of questions that rely on the imagination rather than on recall.

And I was thinking that they’re not only kind of tailored for people with memory issues, but they’re also I think work well with younger people. So, you know, if you could spend the whole day with one person, who would it be? If you could fly, where might you go? If you could eat one food a day, what food would you choose?  So I think those are for all ages really. 

And then another kind of conversation idea is to share a photograph. Maybe it’s a photograph of the family, maybe it’s a funny photograph of a dog doing mischief, and you kind of ask a loved one with dementia, but again, it could be, uh, also asking other people at the table to tell a story together about that picture.

Who do you think is in the picture? What name should we give the people or the animals? What are they doing? How are they feeling? What’s going on? What happens next? What would you– how would you like it to end? What should we call this story? And then you write it down as they’re telling it to you, and then you share it back, and you have a shared conversation.

You have a shared moment at the table. So that was another conversation idea. 

Bri DeRosa: Yeah, I love that one because it really would work for multiple generations, right? It’d be great for building storytelling and sequencing and vocabulary in younger kids, and it’d be fun for everyone. And then it would also be great for kind of dodging recall issues in someone who might be sensitive to that as they’re aging.

So kinda works for, for everybody at the table. Yeah. 

Well, it has been a pleasure, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Thank you. Thank you both, and I’ve learned a lot myself. I’m gonna take these ideas myself and use them in my own home with my multi-generational family, but also with my patients.

So thank you both for your wisdom and humanity, and for this project, too. What a great thing you’re doing. 

Dr. Anne Fishel: Thanks, Steve. That means a lot. 

Bri DeRosa: Thank you so much. 

Dr. Steve Wengel: Pleasure. 

Bri DeRosa: All right. And for our listeners, remember, anytime, you can reach out to us on our website, thefamilydinnerproject.org. You can find us on Meta platforms, so Facebook, Threads, and Instagram.

And we look forward to hearing from you, and we’ll see you next time on the Family Dinner Project podcast.